Reag into his backpack, Balthazar carefully retrieved the broken golem core. With steady steps, the crab walked toward the smithing area of the fe, ready to y the cracked orb onto the burning coals.

  “Argh!” excimed the mert, feeling the bzi radiating from the fe seep into the cracks on his shell, the searing pain nearly making him drop the core.

  Stepping back, Balthazar pced the orb down with trembling pincers. The heat was to, and his iate only made it harder to bear.

  “Boss want Druma to help?” the goblin shouted from the back.

  “No, stay back there, Druma,” the crab quickly replied, w his skin-having assistant would get himself severely burned in his eagero be helpful.

  Blue would certainly be more fortable around high temperatures, but her wings and talons werely made for finesse.

  “Seriously? Out of all the ridiculous junk I have here, I ’t find a single health potion?!” Balthazar grumbled as he dug through the tents of his backpack.

  He needed some way to make it closer to the fire, in order to pce the core into the fe so that it could fuse back together. Unfortunately, other than way too many bottles of supposed “Potions of Hydration” and some other unhelpful cos, the mert couldn’t seem to find anything that would work.

  “If only I had some potions of fire resistance…”

  For a moment, he recalled a certain bandit chugging down a bottle of an e liquid seds before exploding into a ball of fmes, and a shiver ran down his shell.

  “No potions for me.”

  As Balthazar ulling his cws out of the backpack, he noticed the two metal ingots he currently owned, one silver and the old.

  The goldehe mert already knew would be of here, but he found himself w if the silver bar he brought from Marquessa would do anything useful.

  Just as he looked at the k of metal and touched it w what kind of imbuing he could get from that, his Monocle of Exposition dispyed a description in front of his eye.

  [Imbuing - Silver Ingot]

  [Duration: 15 minutes]

  [Effect: 50% resistao all elemental effects]

  Huh. Fire is a, right?

  With time a w against him, Balthazar gripped the silver ingot and activated his Imbuing skill.

  The metal disappeared from his grasp and a cold feeling washed over his body as a shiny coating of metal appeared around his shell.

  “Boss is silver!” Druma excimed from the back.

  “Yes I am!” the argent crab said with fidence.

  The imbuing had covered up the fissures on his shell, easing his ag and also shielding him from the intense heat of the fe ahead.

  While still intehe temperature was now bearable enough to proceed, and so the determined crusta picked the core back up into his cws and walked to the bze.

  With a strained wihe sterling mert gently dropped the cracked heart of his friend into the fiery coals.

  “What ?” he asked himself, cheg the open book again. “Damn, that’s right. Going to need something to bind it back together.”

  Balthazar looked through the bits and pieces of ore and other metals left around the dusty workshop. Nothing was quite right. Either there was too little of something or it was too low quality to suit the heart of his best friend.

  “Oh, what’s this?” the crab said, pushing aside a pile of old scrolls to reveal a rge k of a metallic blue rock sitting underh, strangely and free of dust.

  [Cobalt Ore]

  [A rare and nearly iructible metal. Usually too difficult to create ons or armor with, it is a favorite among artificers due to its incredible magical properties. And because it’s pretty to look at!]

  “That sounds perfey golem!”

  Holding the ore in his pincers, Balthazar skittered back to the fire, where he dropped the k h blue ro top of the core.

  He watched for a moment, realizing he had little idea of what he was doing.

  “Damn it, why isn’t it melting?” he impatiently said, cheg the timer on the Golemancer’s Mark in the er of his eye.

  He was a mert, not a smith. As much as he liked shials, he had little idea of what went int ingots like the golden one he had just acquired from the ste room a few minutes before.

  It reminded him of pastries—as most things did. He very mujoyed ing them, but he had no talent for making any himself.

  With his thoughts going baadeleine and how much he missed her, Balthazar found himself reminisg over the times the two of them sat by the pond, chatting while snag on whatever delicacy she had brought him that day.

  He remembered the ms where she tried to teach him how to bake simple things, going over each step in her recipe books while the crab ped down on another slice of pie. It never really went very far. Both because the crab had little patience for how much time the baking process took, and because being gifted with superior pincers meant he was not cut out for the fi of operating kit utensils or handling delicate doughs.

  “What did Madeleine once say about making dough rise?” the shiny crusta wondered. “That different kinds require higher temperatures than others?”

  With a snap of his pincer, Balthazar turned back to his panions.

  “Blue, get over here and give this thing a breather!”

  The drake swooped down and hovered over the fe, her fpping wings blowing wind into the magicoals like a bellows, increasing the iy of the fmes.

  Taking in a big breath, the winged creature let out another bout of azure fire, bathing the ore and the core in magical heat.

  “It’s w!” Balthazar excimed iement, looking through the gap of his pincer as he shielded himself from the blinding bze. “Haha! F is just like baking!”

  Blue ceased her fire breathing and flew away to nd behind Druma, looking visibly exhausted.

  “Good job, girl,” said the crab. “I’ll take it from here now.”

  Using his baker’s teags as inspiration, the crab moved back to his version of a recipe book, looking for the step in the process of baking himself a new golem core.

  The golemancy guide told him to move the damaged core around using a pair of tongs, ensuring an even distribution of the binding material, but Balthazar khat using human tools wasn’t for him.

  He only had one pair of tools, and those would have to do.

  With a loud gulp, the crab brought his pincers into the fe’s fire, grabbing the red-hot golem core and rotating it around as the melting ore slowly seeped into the cracked areas.

  Despite the elemental resistahe scorg heat was still hard to take for more than a few seds, but Balthazar did not relent, remembering how Bouldy didn’t when he held that avao save him.

  “Oof, it’s starting to smell like steamed crab in here!”

  Like a proud chef watg his yeast bubbling and fermenting, the fasated crusta observed as Bouldy’s clowed brightly and fused with the cobalt, the two halves binding back together, leaving the red orb covered in azure veins that pulsed with magic.

  [Repaired Golem Core]

  “Yes!” the crab excimed, g his pincers in celebration.

  The mark’s timer was reag five minutes left and Balthazar gnced baervously at the immobile statues on their pedestals all around the fe.

  “What’s !” he said, flipping the book’s pages.

  Reading over the instrus, he learned he would o ihe core into a prime material again, just like he had done bae, with his favorite boulder.

  “Crap! What do I use?!” the scrambling crab said. “I need enough material to make a golem!”

  “Boss, boss!” Druma yelled from his safe distance, pointing a fi something nearby. “Big rocks!”

  With no time to waste, Balthazar scurried to whatever his assistant was trying to show him.

  Near one of the edges of the fe sat a rge pile of loose rocks, eae bigger than the crab himself. They were brown and rough at first gnce, like any other on stone one would find on the side of a mountain or a cliff. But upon closer iion, the mert noticed peculiar lines shining like metal from the inside of the rocks.

  “It’s like a raw version of the material those guardians are made of.”

  [Primordium Rock]

  [A type of primordial mineral with metallic properties. Instead of melting away, these a rocks harden with the metal when under high temperatures, making it a material of choice folemancers. Tastes like dirt when licked.]

  He looked at the statues and at the timer again. There was no time to waste p.

  “We o get these in the fire with the core!” he said to Druma.

  The goblin rao help push one of the boulders, but the rock was too heavy for them and refused to budge.

  Seeing the other twling, Blue swooped in to their aid, usialons to push the stooo, but to no avail.

  “It’s too big to transport this way,” the increasingly agitated crusta said. “If they were smaller rocks I could… That’s it! We o break them. Druma, your staff!”

  The assistant’s ears perked up and he looked at his on. Likely ag on his most primal goblin instincts, he started smag the boulder with the blunt side of the staff.

  “No, no! Not like that! Hit it with the magical bolts!” Balthazar said.

  “Oooh! Druma get it now!”

  Adjusting his wizard hat away from his eyes, the goblin threw his cape back dramatically with one hand while slowly waving the staff in circles with the other.

  Biting his tongue in the er of his mouth and with a bead of sweat rolling down his deep frown of tration, Druma charged up his spell until the gem at the tip of the staff glowed bright green.

  With a thrust forward, the goblin released a stream of emerald bolts, eae hitting the boulder’s surface with enough force to leave small cracks on the softer parts of the stone.

  “Keep going! Chop those ingredients!” said the crab.

  One volley after the other, the goblin struck the rock with everything he and his staff had, until the boulder cracked open with a loud rumble.

  The two halves split apart ao the floor, shattering into smaller ks.

  “Great job, Druma!” Balthazar said, quickly gathering primordium rocks with his pincers. “But stay baow, it’s too hot in there for you.”

  The mert ran back to the core, which pulsed bright red iween the blue coals it rested on, and spread ks of the unrefined mineral over it the way he imagined Madeleine spread slices of apple on her pies.

  Dashing bad forth as fast as his legs could, Balthazar dumped all the raw primordium he could until the golem core was covered in a pile of it.

  “And something to remind you of home,” the crab whispered as he reached into his personal belongings arieved one of his oldest treasures: a small pebble from his colle of smooth rocks.

  It was the first one he had ever picked up by the shores of the pond, attracted by its round and smooth shape, long before he had discovered s, pastries, or strange scrolls. Back when he was just a young crab who talked to a boulder a a pet rock for pany, because he lived all alone in a pond, with no friends or pany.

  His pincer hesitated over the fire before dropping the pebble in. It was hard to let go of one of his oldest possessions, but he k would be well guarded in his friend’s heart.

  The bright blue fmes burned high, bathing the room in an azure hue as they slowly melted the stones over his friend’s heart. Too slowly.

  “Two minutes left before the mark expires!” the panig crusta said. “Smelt faster!”

  The pile of rocks kept breaking apart aing until it turned into thick bright va, flowing and pooling around the orb.

  “Crap! It says I o cool it now!” Balthazar said, gng at the book. “How do I do that?!”

  The mert looked around at the fe instruments around him, the valves, levers, and pulleys ected to s and gears, all far too plex for him to figure out in what little time he had left.

  “I’m just a crab, I don’t know how to work this fe!” he excimed. “Wait, I’m a crab! I kly uts out fires. Water!”

  Quickly shoving both arms into his backpack, Balthazar started pulling out all the bottles of pond water Rob had delivered to him.

  “I was going to sell these for lots of !” he grumbled. “But I guess this is a good trade too.”

  Popping their corks with the tip of his pihe crab began p the tents of his “Potions of Hydration” over the molten rod the coals.

  Clouds of steam shot up as the water came in tact with the heat, making Balthazar cough and look like a deranged alchemist preparing a crazy co.

  The fmes died down and the molten primordium began to solidify again, binding with the blue veins of the cobalt into a much denser form.

  But the core remained i.

  “Why isn’t it w?!” the stressed crusta said. “I’ve repaired the core. There’s plenty of prime material to fuse with. Why isn’t this thing shaping into a golem? I don’t have ti—”

  [Golemancer’s Mark duration: 0 seds]

  “Oh no…”

  The silver crab turned his eyestalks to the other end of the hall just as several heavy thumps echoed through the fe’s chamber.

  The guardian statues had woken up and were stepping down from their pedestals.

  “Boss!” Druma shouted, pointing at the ining forces.

  A dozen fuardians closed in on the workshop, ons pointed forward.

  Blue spread her wings open and stood by the goblin, looking around at the structs encirg them with her fangs bared.

  “Crap, crap, crap!” Balthazar cursed, turning back to the core sitting among a pile of half-molten rocks. “What am I doing wrong?!”

  The crab tried to think, remembering everything he had done, looking for what was missing.

  He had followed every step the book listed.

  The core was clearly repaired.

  There lenty of patible raw material for the core to fuse with.

  “Boss, hurry!” Druma shouted as he shot a stream of green bolts from his staff, which hit one of the statues and did little more than make it stumble slightly.

  Was there something else I did back at the pond the first time around that I’m fetting now?

  Blue screeched as she shot out what little fire she could still muster after spending most of her energy p up the fe, barely slowing the guards marg toward them.

  The mert recalled the boulder from bae, the way the Golem Core sank into the stone like it was liquid, fusing into it before the rocks took shape and Bouldy was born.

  “It all worked so easily then…”

  Anroup of sentries was marg toward the crab, ready to seize the unwele visitor using their fe, eae holding a different bronze on, all of them as intimidating as the .

  “I ’t pinch my way out of this,” Balthazar said, gng back at the guardians. “I his to work! What am I miss—”

  Suddenly, Tweedus’s words echoed ba his mind.

  You just gotta pour your heart into that core the same way you did before.

  It all made seo him. Just like what Madeleine had oold him, too.

  It’s not just about throwing ingredients in and mixing things together when baking. You have to add love.

  “That’s what I’m missing…” the crab whispered. “I’m missing my friend.”

  The fuardians readied their ons as they marched into the workshop area, their empty bronze faces refleg the dying fires of the fe and a scared silver crab leaned over a lifeless core.

  “I’m sorry you had to hold that avao save us, Bouldy. It was all my fault. If I hadn’t been so greedy with that stupid golden statuette none of that would have happened. I lost my best friend because I didn’t value what I already had a wanting more. I was dumb. Probably still am! Just now I almost ruined my one shot t you back because I got greedy old again. It’s all my fault, it always is! I know I’m stubborn and full of fws, and maybe I don’t deserve it, but… but I miss you, buddy!”

  The living statues encircled the mert and prepared to seize him, but Balthazar chose to keep on whispering to the core.

  “I don’t care how long it took me to get here, or how many dangers I went through, or if these big piles of metal take me, I just want to see my best friend one more time!”

  The red-hot core started trembling timidly.

  But the fuardians had already grabbed the crab.

  “It’s w! It’s w!” Balthazar yelled, trying to g to the edge of the smelter as the statues pulled him by the shell and legs. “Let me go! I ’t stop now! I’m almost there! Let me bring my friend back!”

  The trembling increased, but the structs cared not for it or the crab’s pleas, and forcibly pulled him off the fe, carrying him to the other sentries, who had already captured his panions ahem uheir bdes.

  “Let them go! I’m the trespasser, I brought them here! It’s me you want!” a desperate Balthazar excimed at the ung statues, before looking back at the shaking Golem Core. “Please wake up, Bouldy! Help Druma! Help Blue! Save our friends!”

  The core pulsed red, its cobalt veins glowing a brilliant blue as it vibrated violently and sank into the molten rocks.

  Steam billowed from the sizzling cy, twisting and bubbling as it embraced the orb.

  Like raw dough rising in the warmth of ahe primordial co grew.

  The shattered rocks, broken by a goblin's magic, fused and hardened with cobalt breathed into life by a drake. The core bound itself with the fiery materials, tempered by the waters from a distant pond, carefully poured by the pincers of a crab who longed for his lost friend.

  In the burning coals, the golem’s heart stirred again, answering the call of his friends like he always had.

  The fuardians paused all at once like a hive mind, turning toward the smelter as va spshed out of it and a giant arm emerged, reag out for the ceiling.

  A thunderous rumbling shook the ground when a stoorso began taking shape, rising from the blue fires of the golem fe with hot magma rolling off its shoulders.

  A head soon followed, its eyes slowly opening up to the world while the struct stood up.

  With a powerful jet of steam venting out of its settling rock joints, the golem rose from its cradle of fire and stone, flexing its arms as his earth-shattering roar shook the walls of the a chamber.

  “FRIENDS!”